Rogue One: Plenty of thrills in this Star Wars entry

Rogue One (2016) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated PG-13, for intense sci-fi action and violence
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.16.16

The Force is strong with this one.

Rogue One is a crackling entry in the Star Wars canon, perhaps most accurately subtitled Episode 3.95. It takes place immediately preceding 1977’s original Star Wars, and in fact can be viewed as the events abridged in that film’s opening text crawl.

Once Jyn (Felicity Jones) agrees to join Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) on a mission to find
and rescue her father from the evil Empire, she's startled to discover that her new
partner's companion droid, K-2SO, is a former Imperial Enforcer Droid ... with a
distinct inferiority complex.

The fast-paced script — credited to John Knoll, Gary Whitta, Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy — is equal parts heist thriller and down ’n’ dirty war film: a fairly grim escapade, by this series’ usual standards, taking place at a time that finds the severely overmatched rebel Alliance without much of the “new hope” promised by the eventual arrival of Luke, Han and the many others destined to enter the fray.

This film’s essential place in series continuity notwithstanding, director Gareth Edwards and his scripters manage the neat trick of making it a solid stand-alone adventure, for the benefit of any first-time Star Wars viewers (assuming such individuals still exist). This adventure builds to a terrific climax, while also delivering an unexpected degree of emotional gravitas.

The prologue and first act are a bit top-heavy with exposition and the need to introduce a lot of new characters, but — once beyond the information dump — it’s smooth sailing.

Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), once a respected scientist with the evil Empire, became appalled by the weapons of mass destruction he’d been fabricating for his masters; he fled to an outworld planet with his wife Lyra (Valene Kane) and their young daughter Jyn, hoping to remain beneath the Imperial radar. As the film opens, they’ve just been found by Imperial Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), a former colleague, and now an implacable enemy determined to put Galen back to work on a massive new project.

From the moment we meet him, Mendelsohn oozes the “foul stench” that has characterized the best of the Star Wars middle-management villains. His curled-lip sneer and quietly condescending tone make him the pluperfect martinet.

Krennic succeeds in his task, but little Jyn manages to escape and hide in a bolt-hole, where she’s eventually rescued by Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), a rebel guerrilla fighter given considerable exposure in TV’s animated Clone Wars series. (It’s nice to put a live-action face to this character.)

Elysium: District 10?

Elysium (2013) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: R, for profanity, gore and strong bloody violence
By Derrick Bang

Based on the evidence thus far, filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has only one story to tell.

Elysium feels much like his previous film, District 9, writ larger: another saga of oppressed “aliens” seeking a way to rebel against their cruel and privileged overlords. The setting and opposing teams have changed slightly, and Blomkamp clearly has a bigger budget this time at bat, but the key plot points are essentially the same; even the hardware and weaponry look familiar.

His impulsive plans having failed yet again, Max (Matt Damon) finds himself trapped on
a medical table, while the coldly arrogant Delacourt (Jodie Foster) orders some
purloined computer data stripped from his brain ... not at all bothered by the fact that
this process will kill him.

That said, political oppression has been a big-screen sci-fi staple going all the way back to 1927’s Metropolis, and it often produces great drama. So we can forgive Blomkamp the familiarity ... this time. (He would be wise, however, to move in a different direction henceforth.)

The South African-born filmmaker has a solid eye and ear for social strife — no surprise, given his homeland — which contributed, in great part, to the narrative power of District 9. Now embraced by the seductive lure of Hollywood, Blomkamp has turned his disapproving eye on the United States, and its dysfunctional immigration policy; the results aren’t likely to be embraced by red staters.

The year is 2154, and the entire Earth has become an environmental wasteland, ruined by industrial excess, land mismanagement, resource depletion and various other unchecked global horrors we currently practice, with no eye toward future consequences. Every country, in turn, has become part of a planetwide ghetto, the 99 percent left to scrabble and squabble among themselves.

But not entirely. Movement and behavior are monitored by android peacekeepers that employ computer-chip tracking to maintain a veritable police state bereft of basic human decency. And humor: Just as it isn’t smart, in our here and now, to crack wise when stopped by a traffic cop, it is sheer folly to act smug with one of these gun-toting “law officers.”

George Orwell’s influence weighs heavily, and his vision has come to pass: Big Brother really is watching, and doing so from a massive orbiting space station dubbed Elysium, where the very wealthy have fled in order to enjoy a life of pleasure and privilege among lush gardens and sparkling architecture. Automated med-bays can repair, reconstruct or eradicate anything, from broken bones to cancer.

Blomkamp knows his science-fiction, Elysium being a verdant cross between the domed forests of 1972’s Silent Running, and the technological wonders of Larry Niven’s Ringworld novels.